Sunday, November 11, 2007

Bacon Lovers' Salad

A favorite destination on Date Night is Borders Books. Recently Sweetie and I sat in a couple of their comfortable chairs and browsed our way through favorite magazines. I also picked up a copy of Southern Living's Our Best Recipes, Vol 4.

For starters, the cover had a delicious sweet roll recipe that can be baked in a cast iron skillet. It looked prefect for Christmas breakfast - brunch. We have a tradition of eating on sweet breads on Christmas morning. Since our daughter will be home for Christmas this year, I'm beginning to think about what to bake.

I ended up buying the book because it had so many great sounding recipes. (I also remind myself that it isn't the library, so they need us to purchase books and magazines to stay in business.)

The one I wanted to try first is sure to be a hit with bacon lovers (Y'all know who you are).It combines roasted chunks of sweet potato (I actually used Garnet yams) and onion, crumbles of crisp bacon, fresh baby spinach, and a warm dressing using bacon drippings, red wine vinegar, orange juice and a little honey which wilts the spinach a bit. I made it tonight and it's a winner. The vinegar, honey, and orange juice cuts the richness and fat of the bacon while the spinach adds it's distinctive flavor and the roasted yams and onions have a sweet note, too. I added some orange zest which brightened up the whole dish beautifully. This would be a great salad for Thanksgiving. If you added some dried cranberries it would also work well for Christmas. We had it tonight with a pork loin roast, sliced tomatoes, & steamed broccoli.

Peel the sweet potatoes / yams, and cut into 1 inch cubes. Cut onions into quarters, and cut each quarter in half.

Toss together sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, and oil (I put it into a plastic bag, seal, then shake well to coat the vegetables witht he oil and garlic). Place on a lightly greased aluminum foil-lined 15 x 10 inch pan. Sprinkle evenly with salt and pepper.

Bake at 400 degrees F. for 40-45 minutes or until tender and lightly browned, stirring occasionally.

In a large bowl, combine the baby spinach, the roasted veggies and the warm dressing. Toss well to coat the spinach leaves with the dressing. Garnish with the crumbled bacon. Serve at once.

(The leaves on your heading make me nostalgic. It has rained so much here and then snapped back and forth between cold and rain that we didn't really get much in terms of prettily colored leaves. At least not here in the city...)

Holy smokes, this salad sounds awesome. Dotted with dried cranberries, this would just be amazing. YUM. (Granted, I'd use veggie bacon, but still!!!)

This salad looks so good!! I have been trying not to bookmark too many recipes lately (I have way too many marked!) but this is a salad that would be a definite hit at my house! Maybe I'll make it tonight!

Had a funny feeling that bacon would go over well. I use it so rarely that I had to get the 4 slices for this recipe out of the freezer, but when it's the right ingredient, nothing else will do. Next time i'll use turkey bacon and the following time probably my favorite veggie bacon, but for the first time it had to be the real thing. And don't forget the orange zest...it makes the salad sing.

Kristen,Hope it works for you for Thanksgiving...and it's great to hear that bookstores are you date night favorite, too, especially with recent reports that so many people in the U.S. no longer open a book at all. The rest of us have to do extra book reading and buying to compensate, I guess.

Passionate. Enjoy!

Lis, Come for lunch! We'll have the salad with extra bacon, the chicken soup and something chocolate for dessert. :)

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